Trump, Clinton, & Harassment

We’re in the middle of the most divisive presidential election in our entire history. We have two flawed candidates trying to out-insult each other for their character failings. And they have plenty of character failings between them. And the nation and the world is wondering why in a nation of over three million people we couldn’t find two better candidates. The truth, though, is that anyone who now chooses to run for any high office is scrutinized more closely than anyone in the past. Their every word, spoken or written now or at any time in their past, can now be found instantly and held up for the world to see. Their every action now or then is available to be put on display. Anyone who now chooses to run for any high office has to be either angelically pure or entirely crazy. Do you suppose that if we had been able to examine past leaders as closely as we now can that we’d probably discover them to have character flaws, to have lied, cheated, contradicted themselves, shown weakness or anger? Think of FDR and John F., think of Richard Nixon (No, don’t think of him; it’s just too painful.) In light of their failings, we may not have wanted to vote for them. In other words, they were all merely human, not angels. And our two present candidates are certainly not angels, merely human. Donald Trump is being shown as misogynistic, bullying, ego-maniacal, and politically and historically stupid. Even though he’s only human, he’s also unfit to be our president. Hillary Clinton is being shown as lying, showing poor judgement with her e-mails, enabling husband Bill in his extra-marital affairs, maybe even being guilty of perjury in her testimony about Benghazi. She’s only human, but of the two she’s the best we’ve got. Thank God we have less than a month before we can put this road show to rest.

And while I’m on the subject of Donald Trump, let’s talk about all these women now coming out of the woodwork to accuse him of harassment or sexual assault or even rape. The whole concept of harassment is annoyingly vague. What one person may view as a show of affection, another may see as harassment. How in the world do we determine which is which? At what point does touching become groping? At what point does a kiss require mutual agreement between the two parties? At what point does it become harassment, or even further, become sexual assault? I’m not excusing Trump. He’s still a disgusting person (That sounds like something he’d say, doesn’t it?) But it does seem like we’re making sexual mountains out of disgusting molehills. They should both try to talk about what they would do to run our country, not about what’s so wrong with the other person.